The plan for a “Mediterranean Union” was announced before Sarkozy’s
election in his speech in Toulon in May 2007 and since then it has been
consistently developed.[1]
In his speech in the Moroccan city of Tangier in October 2007, President
Sarkozy started to spell out the nature of the Mediterranean Union, seen
as a “Union of Projects” and invited Heads of Mediterranean riparian
states to a summit scheduled to take place on July 13th 2008 in Paris.
Sarkozy’s initial plan included only littoral states and was to function
like the G8 meetings of Heads of States and governments, with a Council
of the Mediterranean modeled on the Council of Europe. It has rightly
been argued that the agreement reached to establish the
Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) was
not the result of a collective evaluation and a true needs assessment.
Instead, as Schumacher points, “it was the consequence of a complex web
of interstate interaction processes and of the joint, informally
orchestrated opposition of the non-Mediterranean European Union (EU)
governments of Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom to unilateral
French efforts to establish an exclusive regional cooperation
framework”.[2]
By
March 2008, after coordinated pressures, France had to pull back and
incorporate the UfM in the wider Euro-Mediterranean mechanism, thus
allowing for the participation of all EU members.

On the other side of the Mediterranean, despite
their criticisms, southern Mediterranean leaders, as in the case of the
Tunisian President, insisted on the importance of not detaching the new
Union from the EMP, believing that this “will be called on to contribute
towards a re-launching of the EMP, by working to assure a synergy with
the existing Euro-Mediterranean instruments”.[3]

Turkey has balked as it viewed the UfM as nothing more than a mechanism
to keep Turkey out of the EU. This fear is not misplaced as keeping the
EU closed to Turkey was part of Sarkozy’s campaign platform. In fact, he
has argued in the past that Turkey has always been part of Asia Minor
and not Europe.
Turkey’s Prime Minister issued a statement before leaving for Paris in
which he sharply criticized France for its opposition to Turkish EU
membership,
stressing that cooperation in the Mediterranean region and EU
negotiations are two different projects.[4]Beyond the negative attitude adopted at the
begging by Turkey, Sarkozy’s opening to Israel[5]
created difficulties for many Arab leaders to participate in the Summit
in Paris, and certainly didn’t prevent them from accusing Israeli for
its settlements policy. Israel adopted a positive attitude, only when it
became clear that the ENP was not going to be replaced.[6]

The Summit is considered a real diplomatic success, as it effectively
ended the political isolation of the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad,
who has long been regarded as a political pariah by the US previous
administration.
In a heavily publicized event, Assad sat down at the same negotiating
table with Israel’s prime minister. This was the first occasion when the
respective heads of the two states occupied the same room, following
three rounds in recent months of negotiations between them, under
Turkish mediation. Another success of the Summit was Assad’s and the
new Lebanese president, Michel Suleiman, agreement to open embassies in
each other’s capitals.[7]
However, the Paris Summit left many issues regarding the UfM structures,
functions and effectiveness to be decided at the next Euro-Med meeting
in Marseille next November.
At this meeting it was decided that a Permanent Commission of the EU
member states and the southern partners to be established in order to
strengthen co-ownership. It was also decided that the Heads of Governments
of the member states, as well as senior officials will have the
initiative’s political control and that the Arab League will participate
in all Summits and at all levels of the UfM – a decision that has
increased the number of actors with the power to block decisions.[8]

Aliboni rightly argues that the new Euro-Med architecture has configured
a multi-layered “Barcelona Process” in which the UfM is working side by
side with the Neighborhood Policy and the array of Commission's policies
towards the Mediterranean which, in fact, are bound to replace the EMP.[9]
Hence he is not the only one that has doubted the ability of the new
framework to respond to regional challenges more effectively than the
policy couple unless it becomes more flexible inside the Mediterranean
basin and more open to the Middle East.
Only a few months after the Marseille Conference had arranged for the
array of details bound to make the UFM actually work, Israel’s December
2008-January 2009 military intervention in Gaza convinced Arab partners
to plainly suspend the implementation of the new policy and
all related meetings. Although, France has repeatedly attempted to renew
interest for the UfM, many wonder about
the prospects of the Union and how it will evolve in the long term, and
whether it will prove a more sustainable framework to the widely
criticized EMP-ENP couple. The view shared by the majority of Euro-Med
experts
and, informally, even by some French diplomats, is that the prospects of
the UfM are rather bleak.[10]

The postponement of the Euro-Med meeting to be held in Istanbul has left
space only for sectoral projects to move. Politically and
institutionally the UfM remains frozen. Although primarily of economic
drive, if the UfM remains limited to a narrow framework of additional
developmental programs for the South, for sure, southern Mediterranean
partners do not only expect additional EU aid for their economic
development, but also deeper cooperation to deal with the political and
socio-cultural challenges they face.
The focus on the implementation of projects should not set aside
critical region-wide issues, such as democracy-promotion, political
reform and the strengthening of civil society, not to mention
the prevention of another major outbreak of violence in the Middle East.
These questions and a few others, pending, remain fundamental for the
future of the UfM. Will Spain have the capacity to revitalize
Euro-Mediterranean relations? Spain has always endeavoured to fully
benefit from its EU presidential semesters to renew its European
commitment and to promote within the EU the strengthening of the
relations with the Mediterranean countries.[11]The
Spanish Presidency in 2010 will be held during the Barcelona Process 15th
anniversary and it will be critical for the stillborn Union.

Despite its technocratic character, the UfM is more vulnerable than the
EMP to the paralysis caused from the stalemate in the Middle East.
Contrary to the technical meetings of the Barcelona Process, which
brought together ambassadors and experts, in the Summits of the Heads of
States and governments of the UfM, all controversial issues will be in
the agenda of discussions, regardless of the fact that some would prefer
to abstain from such discussions to avoid political stalemate. French
president Nicolas Sarkozy’s view that the UfM should be established not
in spite of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but because of it, is proving
to be too simplistic. Therefore a real effort is needed this year to
resolve this conflict for the UfM to move.[12]
But even if the UfM overcomes the current stalemate in Gaza, it will
inevitably be decayed in a series of development programs, which will
not even be placed in a substantive political backdrop. As Pace urges,
interactions in the UfM have relapsed back into the same old patterns of
behaviour and therefore the UfM is meant to end unless remedial action
is taken quickly. “It may not be long before the UfM joins the roll call
of dead, unsung and unlamented Mediterranean policies”.[13]
Hence,
if
it survives, it will be far from the grand vision initial proposed by
Sarkozy and definitely less ambitious than its predecessor.

[4]
Many believe that the only reason for Erdogan’s attendance at
the Summit in Paris was to use the opportunity to solicit
support from the leaders of European and Middle Eastern states
for his own battle against the Turkish Supreme Court, which was
attempting to ban his party.

[5]
It may be a canny approach, but it's also a risky one. “Sarkozy
in Israel acted as an intermediary who could be heard by both
sides, and he is more listened to in Israel than his
predecessors”, says Gilles Kepel. Quoted in Eric Pape,
“Mediterranean Bridge Building”,
Newsweek, 19
July 2006, http://www.newsweek.com/id/147680

[9]
Roberto Aliboni, “The
Barcelona Process and its prospects after the Union for the
Mediterranean”,
Études Hellénique/Hellenic
Studies, 17(2),
Special Issue «Union for the Mediterranean: National and
Regional Perspectives», Autumn 2009, forthcoming.

[11]
Esther Barbé and Eduard Soler i Lecha, “What role for Spain in
the Union for the Mediterranean? Europeanising through
Continuity and Adaptation”,
Études Hellénique/Hellenic
Studies, 17(2), Special Issue «Union for the
Mediterranean: National and Regional Perspectives», Autumn 2009,
forthcoming.